Thursday, December 11, 2014

Riding the Ho Chi Minh Trail - Part 1

When it comes to bike tours and where we’d like to go, sometimes
our rationale isn’t so…..rational.Once
we went to Bulgaria because we met someone who grew up there until she escaped
at 10 years old and went back once after it opened up for a vacation and
thought it would be nice bike touring.So we went, but only after I accidentally bought tickets to Budapest
because I got it confused with Bulgaria and had to change them to the “right”
destination!Of course, Western Europe
is pretty much the bike touring mecca, but our desire to escape the clutches of
dreary, pre-winter Salt Lake meant that we would go in November and therefore
that precluded much of possibly also cold/dreary Europe.We both had long thought that Vietnam might
be a fun, exotic, interesting, and nice place to go - and many bike tour
companies do guided trips there – so….why not Vietnam?When I was told that it was a former French
colony and one of the few lasting legacies of that era were good pastries
everywhere (not quite true, as it turns out) and wasn’t all that hot or humid
(also not true) the deal was sealed.So
off to Vietnam we went.

Vietnam is sort of a dog bone-shaped country, with the upper
lobe being the mostly mountainous Northern Highlands that drop into the Hanoi
plain, the middle section being skinny with mountains ramping up from the sea
to Laos, and the bottom smaller lobe oriented around the Mekong Delta south of Ho Chi
Minh City (Saigon; renamed shortly after the last of the Americans
ignominiously bailed out in 1975)

It’s about a thousand miles from Hanoi to Saigon, and with a
little less than two weeks of riding and lots of sights to see we knew that
we’d likely not be able to ride the entire length of the length of the
country.But we guessed that public
transportation would likely be no problem to augment kilometers as necessary,
and we chose to go north to south, mostly because on a map it looks like it’s
downhill all the way (and we figured that we’d take advantage of the days
marching towards the solstice and maybe cooling as we traveled; not that it
matters that much at 17 degrees north)

We flew into Hanoi and were impressed; a big city that is a
bit beyond “bustling”.It took me years
of floundering in arrival cities, but I finally realized the value of
pre-booking a first-night hotel and that paid off to ease the transition
somewhat into a really intense place.We
stayed in the Old Quarter with all the rest of the white tourists and spent an
afternoon wandering around checking out the sites, trying figure out how to get
across the streets without getting nailed by one of the 4.2 zillion scooters
that are fearlessly blasted around town by Hanoians.

There are a LOT of scooters!

Totally uncontrolled and chaotic intersections, but it always flows just fine.

New Tourist - easily identified by clutching the Lonely Planet guidebook - wondering about the viability of getting across the street

Doing her best (swift) Abby Road impersonation

How many restaurants in the US advertise themselves as "cheap and cheerful?" More should!

Hanoi's peaceful oasis in the heart of the city

they are importing all the best aspects of Western society....

I have a penchant for getting shots of (fellow) dork tourists, and this guy seemed ripe....

these folks were trying to worship in a Buddhist temple, trying to ignore said dork tourists who were snapping pics of them doing so.

Asians take their badminton very seriously

According to the Lonely Planet, PDA's are sort of frowned upon in Vietnam, but these lovebirds couldn't resist (and dork tourist captured the moment!)

Park City Utah's sister city?

Ash wisely suggested we engage the hotel to drive us a ways
out of town in their van before we started riding, which proved to be a great
move; the streets are a dizzying maze and trying to navigate using the very-few
street signs that exist and not get run down by the aforementioned scooter
frenzy had the potential to fray marital bliss, much less life and limb.Like a lot of big cities, the ‘burbs
stretched far and our first few hours “outside” of town were still pretty
traffic-filled, but soon enough the city faded behind us and we started a long
grind into the nearby mountains that we didn’t really anticipate, so it slowed
our pace a bit.

The kids loved to yell "Hello!" We yelled back, probably a hundred times per day

Out on the road!

The pace slows a lot outside the city, as always.

Right at sunset we
crested a pass and ironically we had come far enough from the city that we
realized that we may not be able to make it to a place to sleep that night (we
didn’t bring camping gear).But after a
long exhilarating blast down into a deep valey we rolled into a cool little
village few minutes past dark that turned out to be a backcountry tourist
destination and were shortly showered, fed, and watered.

Very cool little guest house that we shared with a guided group of Brits

the local ladies did a dance show for the guided group

Beyond that our days consisted of riding, sweating, and
seeing sights along the way.We started
on the actual Ho Chi Minh Highway, which is the secondary road a ways inland
that parallels the coast highway 1.We
meandered our way down, and hit a few of the must-see places.

Lots of limestone karsts and pretty rustic farming

I wished I had an umbrella on my bike....

some fun mellow riding

We bumped into this work crew having lunch together and they invited us to their feast, which of course included a few shots of the local moonshine!

this lovely lady was the ringleader of those lads and spoke great english. They insisted on not letting us pay for the meal.

Phong Nha is a national park that is quickly becoming known for
its caves.The Hang En cave was just
“discovered” last year and apparently already become quite the phenomenon, with
the only access being via one outfitter and involving a 7 day “trek” that is
currently going for $3000….and is fully booked for the next year and a
half!http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/travel/deep-in-vietnam-exploring-a-colossal-cave.html?_r=0Despite the fact that it’s apparently the
“most beautiful natural feature in the world” (according to some expert source)
we not only forewent that, but also another one that was a 3 day journey, and
instead opted for the 2.5 hour afternoon total joey tourist trip into the Phong
Nha cave itself, which we saw described as “Tailored Adventure Tourism” (it’s
not often you see the words “tailored” and “adventure” juxtaposed!).Despite it’s somewhat cheesy nature, the
ability to float a km into a remarkably-beautiful cave was pretty cool
(literally!A nice respite from the
heat).

From the boat

The cave entrance

Ash in the too-lit-up cave

gratuitous nice river/mountain/boat shot

Locals breakfasting on the riverside deck

heading out for another day in the saddle

We were only a few km from the center of a town where we planned on spending the night and I started pedaling squares due to a bonk. So Ash served up a nice bakery to fuel me for the next few minutes!

I guess there's got to be a job for everyone; these ladies are the train-gate openers/closers.....

Hue is a city in the center/north the former capital of
Vietnam and is home to the Citadel, which is essentially the imperial palace of
Vietnam where a series of emperors lived and ruled from.After a thousand-year occupation by China the
first emperor-around the early 1800’s –
was quite The Man, and they generally went downhill from there, until the last
one who basically bailed after WWII because he was too into big game hunting
and hanging with babes in Paris in lieu of leading a country (come to think of
it, who can blame him?).The Citadel was
described in the Lonely Planet guidebook as being a weedy, ruined mess but it
was actually fairly restored/complete (the fortress was 10km around), and quite
interesting.

mixing it up with the scooters heading into Hue

Every town has a great market, and Hue is no exception. This gal was letting a few customers slip by, however....

Dragon fruit. Most of its glory is in the look, not the flavor, unfortunately.....

anyone for pickled cobra?

A bowl like this accompanied many street vendor meals

And sometimes (every time) I got carried away with it...

the entrance to the Citadel

dork tourist who thinks he's funny

This was a photon of a turn of the century "fight between elephants and tigers". Fair? I wonder which generally prevailed?

This was from the 20's. A bit bohemian!

Dork tourists doing what they do best

Dork tourists doing what they do best! (note zipoffs)

On the Citadel's wall

We found these killer little deep fried bean/sesame things -that cost about 20 cents - that we deemed donut holes, and we were always on the hunt for them as power food. We had read other accounts from westerners touring Vietnam talking about eating Clif Bars.....who needs those when you got donut holes!

The hats are so endearing on locals....

and so awkward on Westerners!

South of Hue we decided to brave the busy highway 1 to get
to the next tourist town and on the way get a chance to climb over what
apparently is a pretty famous pass called Hai Van.It was made famous during the “period of
American Aggression” (as it was referred to in a Hanoi museum we went to)
because it was on of the first places the Americans landed, took over, and then
kept because it’s a strategically-high mountain in a long section of otherwise-flat
beaches.Highway 1 was indeed crowded
with lots of trucks, buses, cars, and of course the ubiquitous buzzing
scooters

not super pleasant riding

but still smiling! Note 50 cent poncho with arms...

but at least we had torrential rain as we got a little lashed by the
tail of the typhoon that was honing in on the Phillipines.But the highway went through a tunnel under
the pass, and for an hour or two we had a brilliantly-quiet climb, and the only
rain break of the day came as we descended, which enabled us to enjoy that as
well.

Da Nang is the third largest city in Vietnam, and we were a
bit daunted by the prospect of riding right through the heart of it. Then as we pulled into town we realized that
an enormous and key bridge was being rebuilt, with no convenient “detour” signs
(maybe there were, but we didn’t know Vietnamese for “bathroom”, much less
“detour”!). However, we quickly realized
we didn’t need signs; we got in the scooter canal and basically flowed with all
of them twisting and turning our way through streets that effectively became
sidewalks. We were pretty much in fast
single file motion, and it was high intensity, because while we could match the
scooters’ speed in the confines of the alleys, there was literally no way for
us to stop without getting mowed down and causing a traffic jam. Ash yelled over her shoulder “are we going
the right way?!” and I hollered back
“dunno! But we gotta keep going!”
Eventually, of course, we popped back out on the main drag with the “detour”
behind us and soft-pedaled a bit to let the adrenaline subside. One of the most memorable kilometers of
riding on the trip for sure.

Bowls of Pho (we found out it's pronounced "pha") were always appreciated as mid-day salty/hearty refuels.

always served up by cheerful proprietresses.

Outside of Da Nang we had about 30km of flat beachside road
our next destination, and it would have been a nice wind-assisted cruise if the
typhoon’s tail hadn’t given a quick flick and really opened up.We were tantalizingly close to our
destination, but it was also getting late and it was raining so hard we felt
like we were getting a bit waterboarded!Remarkably – for such a poor country – this section is filled with fancy
golf resort hotels like St. Regis, Hyatt, etc and we were sorely tempted to
pull the plug and throw down the $200 for a night there, but we persevered and
right at full dark we rolled into yet another nice little $10 local hotel in the
tourist mecca of Hoi An.